


Dandelion

by TheDarkFlygon



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abandonment, Bad Parenting, Canon Trans Character, College, Coming Out, Flowers, France (Country), Friendship/Love, Gay Character, Gender Dysphoria, High School, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, LGBTQ Themes, Language of Flowers, Lesbian Character, Literary References & Allusions, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Multi, Name Changes, Origin Story, Self-Discovery, Symbolism, Trans Male Character, Transitioning, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-09-29
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-07-20 10:17:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16135187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheDarkFlygon/pseuds/TheDarkFlygon
Summary: [Content warnings: deadnaming, explicit depictions of gender dysphoria, discussion about topics such as parental abandonment and surgeries]Catherine Moinot is born on March twenty-first, nineteen-eighty-five in Colombes, France. Her father is a low-wage worker in a factory of the city, her mother is a housewife who gave up on finding a job once her daughter was born. Her father comes from a low-class Lorrain family, her mother is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. A childhood in the middle of the thick urban fabric surrounding Paris, trapped between the roads and the concrete, in the outskirts of the outskirts without the pros of the richer parts of Colombes and the better landscapes of the rest of the country.I should know that. I once was this girl.





	1. A Flower in Spring's Haze

**Author's Note:**

> My notes are pretty lenghty, but please don't turn away from this story just yet because of it! 
> 
> Yes, I know I have countless WIPs running (like... 5 multi-chaptered fics at the very least: SMWF, Earth Never Stops, Glucagon, Cyber Thunder Cider...). But what do you do when you get plot bunnies like that one? You write it down. These fics sadly don't inspire me much lately, so I decided I'd let myself write whatever I felt like writing and wait for my inspiration to come back. It does kind of work.  
> I originally planned this to be a very long oneshot, but heh, whatever. It'll probably be a multi-chaptered fic again, albeit it's probably going to be short. (remember when I said that Glucagon would be five-chapter-long? I do and it's painful)
> 
> Anyway. Ever since I doubted my gender seriously this year, the more it makes sense for me to actually be a guy in disguise. My given name is a travesty and I want to get rid of what you commoners would call boobs. Too bad I don't own measuring tape to order a binder and too bad there is no therapist for it in this goddamn city of mine, amirite?  
> I projected for a very long time on Florian without thinking I did. I just thought it was because I was intrigued, almost enticed to something I wasnt't. It all started last year, very early in the school year, when I started to think making a character out of my new Modern Lit prof was a good idea (no regret there, tbh), but it also kept crawling in the back of my mind. "Hey, maybe he's trans, even if that's probably just you ain't gonna lie. Making your character trans can't hurt if you do enough research, right?"  
> I still stand by that, but it's been weirder and yet more intimate to do it once the sour-ass realization of "you're not a girl" hit me like a truck in the middle of an English class. Draw yourself as a guy, realize it's more like you than when you draw yourself as a girl. In fact, I think I may adopt "Florian" as my "new name". I hate the fact I owe one prof that realization.
> 
> As to the story itself, it's essentially one of my characters' backstory, but told in a weird prose. Feels refreshing, I may finish this one quickly out of motivation. It's incredibly cathartic.

Catherine Moinot is born on March twenty-first, nineteen-eighty-five in Colombes, France. Her father is a low-wage worker in a factory of the city, her mother is a housewife who gave up on finding a job once her daughter was born. Her father comes from a low-class Lorrain family, her mother is the daughter of Chinese immigrants. A childhood in the middle of the thick urban fabric surrounding Paris, trapped between the roads and the concrete, in the outskirts of the outskirts without the pros of the richer parts of Colombes and the better landscapes of the rest of the country.

_I should know that. I once **was** this girl._

 

Catherine is an ordinary child. No peculiar health issue, no learning disability, right-handed. The only con to her life is when she gets diagnosed with myopia, when she is learning to read and write on her last year of preschool. This is noticed not by her parents but by her teacher at the time, Mrs Doline, who then informed her parents about it. She likes various things as a child: reading, with a preference for children’s poetry; sneaking in her parents’ bedroom to see if she can find any books like her classmates say about their parents but she never finds their bookshelf; going to school, playing with her friends, helping her mother cook and watching her father talk about “adult stuff” to his friends.

_In hindsight, this wasn’t the truth. Mr and Mrs Moinot would always threaten the other over a divorce, but in the end, they never went through with it._

 

Catherine is an only child, and so are her parents. Because of this, she often gets lonely and seeks playmates in the street. She lives in a suburban part of the town, allowing parents to let their children safely outside because only a few people have any interest coming there. However, there are barely any children her age in the street, and most of them are boys. She wants to play with them, she is not bothered by being a pirate for a day and an astronaut the day after. She is a prodigy student at school. She learns to talk, walk, read, write and count very quickly, albeit mathematics never is her forte. Her teachers are always impressed: she gets best grade after best grade, with a showing preference for literature-related homework and drills. Reportedly, she does her homework on all her own: her parents are unable to help her.

_Who am I kidding? **Everyone** knows Mr and Mrs Moinot didn’t know **anything**. They weren’t **willing** to learn._

 

Catherine has few friends in school. She always finds herself unlike the other girls, despite their common tastes: she does not enjoy sports nor cars, she would rather read _La Bibliothèque rose_ stories and draw flowers on a small notepad she always has on her, and yet it feels difficult to get along. The teachers tried to keep both genders apart, thinking boys were too bothersome for the girls. She wishes she could stay with the boys, play cop-and-thief with them, but she is forbidden to do so and she spends her breaks watching flowers and insects instead. During the winter, she reads in the classroom.

Catherine has, as such, mostly one friend she meets in middle school: Roxanne Roturier. They are in the same class from sixth to ninth grade, bonding over something Catherine never thought she would ever be feeling: romantic feelings for another girl, this girl being her own best friend. Luckily for her, these unwanted feelings are reciprocated: eventually, only her parents do not want to hear about their daughter’s love for girls, so she plays pretend and says Roxanne is just a very good friend, that she does not fantasize about her at nights after reading some questionable teenage novels in her bed.

_I apologized extensively for being **such** a let-down to Roxanne. _

 

Catherine begins high school under the best of favours: she has the top grade of her middle school at the finals in French, has a loving girlfriend and is promised to a great future, has made a friend who goes by the name of Juliette Soissons, soon to get rid of mathematics and physics she dislikes so much. Yet, this is the time where her doubts begin to grow to an undeniable intensity: something is wrong with her, is it not?

_In retrospect, I wonder how I didn’t notice it earlier._

 

Indeed, Catherine feels like she still does not belong with the other girls, aside from Roxanne she has a privileged relationship with and her friend Juliette, a sworn tomboy who plays in a soccer team on Wednesday afternoons after class. It is not an unusual feeling for teenagers her age, in a way, but it keeps nagging at her about her body. Whenever she looks into the glass, trying to stare at herself, she cannot.

She cannot see herself in this reflection of a fair-busted, long-haired girl. This has to be someone else, another girl whose looks are pleasing to her eyes as a lesbian, but it cannot be her. This is not her.

This is when she realizes _it has never been her_.

 

Thinking back on everything she has ever felt since puberty has started, sixteen-year-old Catherine starts researching on the computers in the school library, trying to sneak past adult eyes watching over all of the students’ online activities and past her own classmates, just in case this is all a giant lie she has fed herself because she feels like cutting her hair. Her mother would never allow her to have a “tranny cut”, so she always shakes her head at this strange want to look like someone else.

In the end, she wants to be her own person, someone she can recognize as such in a mirror. Short hair, less visible breast, dressed in pants and over dresses and pinks. She does not like this light pink her mother has tried to make her wear ever since her daughter was born. It just is not her colour, herself. She seeks for herself, pleaded a divinity she does not believe in to give back her identity.

 

Lost in her thoughts, her first idea is to speak about it with Roxanne. The latter tells her girlfriend to see a therapist she knows from her relatives, mentioning how she has her little idea behind why Catherine is so uncomfortable with her identity. On that day, she asks a question which gets stuck in Catherine’s brain, unable to leave her thoughts:

“Have you thought about how you may not be a girl?”

 

This is a question that, frankly, Catherine has never thought about. It is October when she decides to get the help of this therapist, sneaking behind her parents’ back by pretending she is simply staying at Roxanne’s or Juliette’s after school to do some homework with either of them, all the while she steals her father’s credit card to pay for the expenses as she knows his credit card code. Question after question, Internet search after Internet search, it starts to become clear to her mind, until one day it falls over her like a spotlight would blind the unprepared actor.

 

It is a rainy Wednesday of November. They are staying inside the building during the morning break, as Catherine is sick with yet another cold and Roxanne has insisted for them to not get wet anyway. Juliette speaks about her soccer companions and how she wants to date David, her coach’s younger cousin who is in the boys’ team. Roxanne asks if Juliette has ever thought about joining a professional team once she’s older, but the latter replies soccer is just a hobby, a passion even, but that she would rather do something great for society like becoming a teacher. When asked about what subject, she still says she wants to be a PE teacher. Unconsciously, as she looks through the window sniffling, Catherine mutters “I wish I was this David”. Juliette laughs, Roxanne gets almost offended, until she sees tears running down her girlfriend’s cheeks.

It’s all clear and she hates it, because there is now a fact in her mind she cannot remove.

 

_Catherine Moinot is a boy._

 

His world shatters in front of his eyes. That first name, “Catherine”, is no longer his: he is no longer someone anyone knows. His friends stay quiet when his eyes tear up and nausea climbs out of his oesophagus, his heart’s cry. He never vomits, but the tears get out anyway, and he apologizes to them before he can say anything. Everything starts to fall apart almost as soon as the realization happens, the meaning of any term used to refer to him lost in the sands of time. Without Roxanne and without his therapist, Mrs Flamand, he’d have definitely been lost in translation. They give him a list of things to do so to preserve a sense of identity in a time of change.

_Once again, I don’t really know how that never crossed my mind earlier. It all made so much sense._

 

As such, the boy picks the first male name he is pleased with: Victor. Rather unoriginal, as it simply comes from his favourite author, but it does the job when “Catherine” does not. He is faced with a time where nobody calls him by this chosen name, instead continuing to refer to him as a girl. It is only natural, he thought: he had not been officially diagnosed yet, leaving him unable to press forward with making everyone adapt to his true nature. He decides to “man up”, to endure, and seeing his therapist telling him with a newfound certitude “you have gender dysphoria” should not make him this happy. It comes with all flavours of struggles to prove himself and the world this is so much more than a mere delusion, but he is going to do it.

He is going to show them he is a man.

 

Once the diagnosis is in, Victor is close to turning seventeen. The first step of his journey is to take hormone blockers, as he is still young enough to take these with a certain effect despite the advancement of his puberty and adolescence. He was a late bloomer, the first periods coming much later than intended, but he is thankful for it once he finds out he can block the growth of his unwanted breasts. He now has to make his body his, get rid of the girl in the mirror, and this will take a few aesthetic changes.

Victor also knows it is barely allowed to fake a parent’s signature to get such medicine as hormone blockers. He splits up with Roxanne, convinced she would not love a man and that he has other things to focus on. She is incredibly tolerant yet refuses to split entirely: she wants to be there, so he accepts her presence, because she is the only one who calls him Victor.

 

He sneaks behind his parents’ uncaring backs yet again to get a haircut. He has started doing some dirty work on the Internet from the only good things he got from his parents, a computer in his bedroom so he “would stop bothering them with that computer school shit”, taking commissions for some basic writing online. Yet, Roxanne still manages to give him a way to get his hair cut for free at her sister’s hairdressing saloon. Said sister refers to him as such when she asks what he wants, to which he replies he just wants something to look manlier for the time being. His long, dark brown locks fall on the floor one by one, uncovering his shoulders without needing to be tied in a bun, he even gets small sideburns. When he looks at the end result in the mirror in front of his chair, it finally feels like looking at himself.

_I remember the wide, bright, colourful grin Roxanne had on her face when her sister was finished with me. Perhaps she had always seen me as a boy when I hadn’t noticed, too caught up in trying to be a girl I would never be._

 

In the end, his mother screams at him about cutting his oh so beautiful hair, but Victor does not give her the attention she wants. Instead, he continues his therapy sessions, still faking his parents’ agreement, borrowing unchecked bank accounts, ordering online what he is not allowed to get in real life. His father almost spots him measuring his chest for an order, but he manages to dress up quickly again and look like he does not have the measuring tape behind his back. A couple weeks after, around the time of his seventeenth birthday, in mid-March, arrives the solution for his chest. He obviously knows he cannot wear this all-day-long, his therapist insisting heavily on him not having it on him during sleep, showering or even sports, but that’s fine. It is still much better than not having it at all.

Eleventh Grade then becomes the year where he finally gets called a man by strangers. His classmates still call him by what other people like him call his “deadname”, and yet people from other classes may refer to him as a boy. This makes his heart flutter more than he would like to admit, but Roxanne can read it perfectly on his face. He wears men’s apparel, puts on a masculinizing makeup when he rides the bus to high school, thinks about getting his driver’s licence once he is in college and continues reading Victor Hugo’s poetry.

_I still have my first binder. It’s white and fitted over my chest like a tight bra, easy to hide under my clothing._

 

The first name “Victor” does not really fit him anymore. Spring is finally here with its flowers and just like nature gets reborn around this time of the year, he feels like he needs to find something that fits him more. He tells Roxanne about it, Roxanne who knows all his dirty secrets, when she stops before a lone flower, a misplaced daisy drowning in a sea of concrete. She glances at him, beams him a smirk and tells him with her smiling eyes: “You ever thought about a name related to flowers? You love these. I think there’s… Florian?”

Something ticks inside of him, but he cannot say what exactly. At first, he dismisses it as a light-hearted joke she has the recipe for, and it seems like she was saying it on a whim. And yet, it sticks inside his mind: when the Biology teacher tells his class about flowers, which he half-pays attention to just because it is about flowers and clearly not to study how they reproduce, he thinks back on what Roxanne said. Another light shines upon him, and it all becomes clear.

_My name is Florian._


	2. Daffodil Bouquet

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should precise beforehand this story (just like all my original work) is set in an alternative France where technology and society are more advanced than their IRL counterparts. This is why Florian has access this early to hormone blockers and hormones, when this story is set in anno domini 2003 for the moment.

Finding a name to refer to himself is a life changer. Roxanne calls him “Flo”, Juliette, who is still struggling coming to terms with this but is trying her hardest, insists on “Florian” because she is still not used to it. And yet, she gives him some advice to look more masculine, basing herself off things she has seen among male soccer players: how to make his voice sound lower, how to present as confident and self-assured when he _truly isn’t_ , somehow provides him with brand-new male clothing and underwear he could not have wished for more.

_Juliette once told me, when visiting me in this hospital years later, that her mother was a cashier at a local Carrefour, and that she could easily access unsold products that way. Barely legal, but I doubt much of my early transition was condoned by most of societal conventions._

 

Mrs Flamand tells him, during a session where she finally realizes this has been illegal all along, that she will only give him the green light for the next step once he is an adult in the eyes of the law. This makes Florian realize a few things, starting with what legally being an adult is going to allow him to do. He will finally be able to change his name to the eyes of the world, go on what seems to be a dangerous therapy, stop being himself only around Roxanne and Juliette, stop being “Catherine” around the teachers and the classmates who know he was supposed to be a girl.

Florian makes a third friend who does understand who he is, but he is an online buddy. He lives in the south of the country, kilometres upon kilometres away from Colombes, living in the Mediterranean heat, near the Rhône’s delta. Their friendship is unlikely, considering this friend is already in college, yet feels natural: Lilian is trying to understand his little sister, Florian is just trying to get his voice somewhere where he won’t be targeted by the crude remarks of people reminding him, “you looked better when you weren’t pretending to be a boy”.

 

Yet, anxiety remains in his veins. The more his birthday nears close, Roxanne swearing to buy him the best she can for this important occasion, Lilian thinking of a thousand ideas for a drawn present, the worst it gets. His dysphoria is rushing him to _finally_ take the goddamn hormones before it threatens the remainder of his mental health, so he focuses on books and flowers to pass the time until it gets better.

He remembers an old thing his eighth-grade Literature teacher said once during a class, that there are birth flowers just like there are birthstones, albeit there is no universal version of it. Searching in the local library on a free Wednesday afternoon where he does not feel like going back “home”, he finds out his assigned flower would either be a narcissus or a daffodil. The latter resonates so much, once he looks into the symbolism behind it: new beginnings, unrequited love, respect. The daffodil quickly becomes his personal symbol, the flower he likes to draw on science lessons instead of actually listening.

 

It is every time he goes home from school that he remembers why there is still so much fear inside his heart. He is not afraid of the decision to start HRT: it only feels like the next step on his journey. However, he is terrified of the reactions he will get when he will have to eventually come clean about it, about the fact he is a he and not a she, about how his parents are going to disown him quicker than lightning. Considering their rampant racism and internalized classicism, there is no way they will accept their daughter to actually be a son.

_Phrased like that, I almost sound like I’ve once enjoyed being born to them._

 

Even then, Florian presses on. He has no time to lose worrying about his parents’ reaction when he can spend said time researching where to live in case the worst happens and he gets kicked out from home. He has no real way to gain money until he is out of high school, but he still tries: he applies for holiday jobs for the Easter and summer breaks, he sells some old belongings like most of his female clothes, he still abuses of his parents’ lack of concern and constant arguing to steal a few bucks every week after school. All flats he could possibly get in at the last minute are too expensive for him to afford until his first jobs, so Roxanne finds a solution of him: he can live in an abandoned flat the owner, a man living in Calais named Norbert Leeht, has forgotten he was still paying for.

When she brings him there for the first time, he discovers why someone that guy has forgotten he was paying for it until it was rented: it is incredibly small, just enough for one person with a ridiculously tiny bathroom and barely any other furniture than a bed that was left there years ago and a small kitchen. It is still much better than he expected to get: at least, he does not have to pay for anything not additional furniture or food.

 

The premise being this eerily advantageous, Florian looks more into it and into its owner. Norbert Leeht is known online for his abandoned flats people love to occupy illegally when in a pinch, flats he has forgotten he owned and had not rented, too busy counting the amounts of money he gets from villas he actually cares about. In order to receive his mail properly, he decides to make his address Roxanne’s, the easiest option he has considering this flat will never have his name on it.

Furnishing the flat is harder than he wishes it was. He needs to move most of his room’s furniture without being spotted by his parents, for which the ideal time is on Wednesday afternoons where his father is at work and where his mother is out shopping for groceries. Roxanne, Juliette and he always strike around his time and, soon enough, only the bed and a dresser he plans on replacing anyway are out of there. After a while, the flat feels more like home than his supposed house has ever done. Everything is in place for the final revelation.

 

On March 20th, 2003, a warm Thursday where spring is just around the corner, he decides to let his plans finally play out, hoping for the best like the young and optimistic boy he has been ever since seeing things go forward. His therapist hands him out a strange box after his session of the week. Upon opening it, he sees a small recipient and a syringe. He does not need to read the label on the former to have a smile invade his face and his eyes tear up.

“I figured you’d be mature enough to handle these by yourself, Florian,” she tells him as she looks at the box. “And since I know you’re rather shaky on your finances, I’ve paid you the first dose and the syringe with it. You told me you didn’t mind needles, right? I can provide you with pills if you do.”

His voice catches up in his throat, and even if he wants to be a man and not cry, his thankfulness eventually explodes.

“I… Thank you so much, I… I don’t know what to say…”

 

Dr Flamand then spends some time explaining him how to inject himself, and even if his fingers are shaking around the syringe as if it could break under his touch, it feels like the best piece of news in the latest year. It is finally in his hands, the way to break away from womanhood even more, to provide his body with what he is missing: his facial hair, a lower voice, a better repartition of his body fat.

Of course, he does not go blind into hormone reassignment surgery. He has researched its symptoms, asked high-school science major Juliette if she can clear up things, eventually blesses Lilian for being a medical student in an internship. He knows he will look very… teenage-y for a while, with a lowering voice, potential skin issues, possible hair loss, a risk to get excessive body fat he does not really want. After all, he is wearing a binder to hide his chest, there is no need for it to get bigger. And yet, he feels more than ready for it, already eyeing the syringe in desire.

_I remember being terrified of this decision, when I first found out about HRT and what it was about. I kept asking to the mirror, “What if this isn’t what I am? What’s going to happen to me?”. I have to say, I regret not having started it before, even if I know I had to be mature to handle it correctly._

 

Everything is set in stone in his eyes when his eighteenth birthday rolls around. It is a time of truth, his moment to come out, to tell everyone “Catherine” is dead, to welcome Florian, the one he has been all along. It is exciting, it is terrifying, like his first rush of injected testosterone, the fear of the needle and the euphoria from the hormone he has craved for years. He already thinks of all the pros and cons of coming out, having studied the matter for the past months and having talked about it with Roxanne and Juliette for days on end. He prepares himself for school, gazes into the mirror wishing for facial hair to come soon, puts on his needed outfit and heads to school, both terrified and ecstatic.

_I’d define myself as a careful and prudent man, but it wasn’t the same when I was a boy. It’s difficult to see what discrimination you are about to face when it’s invisible to most people due to how rare this all is._

 

For the first time ever, Roxanne and Juliette call him out by his real name instead of “Cat” as they are used to around his class. They help the anxious, now tetanized boy to ask his homeroom teacher, the Literature one, if he can make an important announcement. Of course, this makes the old lady be suspicious, but she accepts nonetheless, and he mentally prepares himself to break Catherine’s shell once and for all, never to be seen again, so ready to reject her for the last time and never look back on it. Looking at his entire class, all there for once, taking his proudest stance despite the sheer terror stacking in his throat, he takes one deep breath in, one out, and stares at everyone though his clear, “enticing” irises.

_I remember by heart what I said on that day, fifteen years later._

 

Everyone, listen. It’ll sound weird, I know, but I’ve never been a girl. I’m a boy, a boy in a girl’s body. It’s a rare case, a mental disorder if you want to call it that. Please, even if you don’t believe it…

Don’t call me Catherine.

_Call me Florian._

 

The surprise it drops onto everyone’s shoulders is mind-blowing. Most of them stare at each other, bewildered, and the fear rises inside his chest at an alarming rate. Roxanne is not in his class, and so is Juliette, so he is all alone in a class who barely knows him anyway. Some start to laugh, others seem to remember some sex education lessons provided by Planned Parenthood during their earlier school years, or by that one Biology class from last year, and in the end he is torn between people not taking him seriously and others trying to understand. The teacher stares at him, at loss for words, so she gulps and just politely, almost quietly, tells him “please take your seat again, Ca…” and she stops herself.

Acceptance does not come easily after this announcement. The mockeries start even more, saying he is just “playing pretend” and “a tomboy who takes it too far”. The jokes are common and start almost immediately, but some classmates really show empathy and a will to understand, so it is all fine. Well, the mockery does remind him of the risks he has read about online all that time and how dysphoric they all are, but it is nothing compared to the last straw.

His parents.

 

For the first time in years, Florian goes up to his parents as he wants to be, rather than what they would have him rather be so they would have no more issues.

_It may sound strange to the outside ears, but I was an undesired child. They were just against getting an abortion for me and too uneducated to know they could put me elsewhere, although I have to give them kudos for trying to raise me and always feeding me. I suppose routine and familial allocations helped me being more helpful than they had expected._

In fact, he almost shows it heavily on purpose, binder on, hair freshly cut by Roxanne’s sister Solange, dressed in all dark blues and men’s apparel, in a spirit of provocation and spite he did not think he had before this day and preparing it for it. His heart still tries to break out of his ribcage, smashing itself against the bones in his chest, but he keeps it together and mans up.

 

The reaction he gets from them as soon as he says “Mom, dad, I’m a boy” is baffling at best. They stare at him, asking him why he is saying that, how it is “just a phase” and how “he’ll see that he’s gonna know he’s a girl soon again”.

_What a joke._

Florian arguments back, pulls together all the ideas and explanations he has ever done, while not even hoping to get their approval. It seems counterproductive, he knows how this is all going to play out. He has nothing to lose, so he puts between his parents and him the paper officially diagnosing him with gender dysphoria, another with all the actions he has taken to “fix” the issue. The eyes of his father shoot through his irises, rage burning in that stare, barking following.

 

“You’re no daughter of mine.”

“And I’m no girl,” he replies.

“Fuck off, get out of here, you fuckin’ crossdressing fuck!”

“I guessed you’d ask me to do just that.”

“Why did you tell us then?!” his mother asks him through tears he can tell are fake, the way to bribe her way out of divorce threats.

“Because I’m no dishonest man. I waited for this day for so long.”

“Fuck off.”

_“Farewell.”_

 

Taking the remainder of his bedroom’s things, Florian sets off, leaving nothing behind him but a few unsold girly clothes and a rotting flower which died before seeing spring come back. Roxanne is waiting for him outside, a warm smile and welcoming arms he still loves despite the split-up. Despite how ready he felt he was before, tears come to his eyes and he abandons himself in his best friend’s embrace.

_Eighteen-year old me would have liked to know how painful being rejected by your own family can be painful, even if you know the end result isn’t going to be pretty._

 

Roxanne invites him to come in her car, saying she would drive him back home, putting the last of his belongings into the chest of the vehicle. She lied: minutes later, she tells him she is paying him a good dinner in a not-so-expensive restaurant, “because he deserves only good things when he’s been that brave with this”.

She gives him a bouquet of daffodils before they drive off, telling him these are his favourite flowers and that he now needs to move on. _Isn’t this the meaning of daffodils? I think you once told me that when you picked them as your symbol or something._

“Thank you so much” escapes in a sob from his mouth before he takes off his glasses and wipes them with his arms. To all the preparation he has made for this day, and to all the better days to come.


	3. Turning The Page

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a shorter chapter, mostly serving as a sooth transition from high school life to the first type of college courses featured in this story.  
> I'll probably name this one by its actually most common name, hypokhâgne/khâgne, in the future, so I hope it won't bother people.  
> I'm way too excited to show Florian's roommates maaaaan.
> 
> (sorry for the lack of trans-related matters in this chapter, I promise the focus will be back on these in the near future)

Outing himself as a transgender man without saying the exact term was only the first step in a journey Florian knows is going to be long and tedious. He knows he will have to move out of Colombes sooner than he would like: there is no university in the town, and he does want to be better than his now-gone parents and have an actual diploma aside from his Baccalauréat. Moreover, he has graduated in Literature, as opposed to Roxanne and Juliette with their respective Sciences and Economics and Sociology majors, so he cannot really pretend this is going to make him go very far in life aside from maybe, just maybe and by sheer luck, work as a cashier or something alike.

He has had a number of these “let’s take an hour to find everyone’s dream career and paths!” classes in the past two years. Of course, his ears have always been at least half-opened, so he knows he wants to set his life in the great sea of literature… but how? College feels like it will be too expensive unless he goes to the other side of the country. Most of his classmates seem already set on Paris’s numerous universities, including the prestigious ones (to that he laughs a bit, considering some of these same classmates cannot spell properly), but him? He does not know what he wants exactly.

 

His Literature teacher, the old and soon-retired Mrs Paris (a name that would have fitted would have she not been born and raised in Nanterre, the nearby prefecture), tells him he should think of preparatory class. Apparently, it will give him the ability to shoot for the stars and rise to the top of the intellectual society of the country if he ever goes to the end of it. Ambition is not something he has been known for, so this surprises him, but the description of this multi-course class to replace the unforgiving first two years of traditional college tempt him. Moreover, if he can find one with a dorm, he can pay less than if he had to have a flat and necessities to buy on top of it.

_A student, from when I was a professor in Brest, once asked me why I allowed myself to be concerned about her finances because I was just paid so much. I came clean to her that I once was an almost-homeless disowned boy. Her face’s expression immediately softened._

 

However, there are a lot of different literature preparatory classes he could attend, and as such he needs to pick his favourites. He discovers Henri IV and Fénelon in Paris are the most prestigious ones, but their reputation and proven efficiency make it so they are the hardest to get. Instead, and thinking of living costs beforehand, Florian finds a far more interesting offer in the Hauts-de-Seine themselves, reducing the costs of moving in case he does need to rent a flat for the holidays. He talks about it with Roxanne and Juliette who are moving to Paris for their studies, the logical course of action to take in these cases, but they wholesomely support his decision and wish him good luck.

_Post-secondary orientation is one of the toughest trials a teenager has to go through. I myself hesitated over my future job, there and after, and I suppose attending Lakanal helped me stall by thinking of potential competitive exams and great schools I could attend later. Who could guess I ever thought about becoming a landscapist by looking at where I am now?_

 

In the end, and with the help of his main teachers, he fills a demand for two schools. He still caved in for Mrs Paris’s requests for him to request Henri IV, but his main objective is in his first wish, the school which seems to call for him: Lakanal, in the city of Sceaux. It is the closest school he could think of, and yet the few pictures he has seen of this campus-sized middle-high school hybrid resonate with his want for education. There are results in there too, with a few graduates from the prestigious ENS of Ulm Street amongst its former students. To be exact, he has two wishes, and his very first one is the one with the dorm.

He is about to go into his Latin exam, a supplementary oral exam he wishes he did not take back in freshman year when he had to decide if he wanted to continue with that language, when the results are announced with the classic boards he has grown to known for miscellaneous information. Despite the obvious questionable character of displaying everyone’s results publicly like that, he cannot help the grin forming on his face. He allows Roxanne, who discovers his results near him, to hug him despite the discomfort she may feel from his binder and the one he feels from his chest in general. For the span of a few minutes, everything seems all right, everything seems like it cannot go wrong anywhere down the line.

 

The finals arrive quicker than everyone ever expects. On his side, his class still has not finished the philosophy program, his English classes are still a mess to decipher, and it seems like he may be running out of time for studying. As such, he allows himself to read his learning sheets in all the waiting rooms he ever is in (mostly Mrs Flamand’s, he has to admit), recites some parts of his lessons when he cooks or showers. Before he knows it, before the entire school knows it, the finals have rolled around and have finished almost as soon as they have come, leaving behind them only the bittersweet taste of predicted subjects and others who completely threw him off guard. He is still sore over the travesty that was the Literature exam.

The day the results are announced is a blessing. He is graduating and it feels so good to have managed to land the “Very Well” general mention on it once he gets to see his grades. Roxanne and Juliette share his joy, to their own extent and personal results, and the three of them realize the downsides to all these: they will not see each other again once this is over. They are parting ways, them to Paris, him to Sceaux, them to college, him to preparatory class. And yet, Roxanne keeps a smile on her face, tells them it is not over for their friendship as long as they can remain in contact. She gets her phone out, smiles as she points at it, reminds them of their email addresses they all have by this point. Juliette dries the beginning of tears in her eyes, agreeing with another smile. In the end, Florian is the last to get over it, but he does not cry, and instead he gives them his address from way back home on a piece of paper.

_Needless to say, I did my best to remain in contact. I’ve eventually lost Juliette, due to her changing phones and having her email address unresponsive after a few years, but Roxanne and I are still best friends to this day._

 

The summer holidays start on the note that they need to see each other as much as possible while working to spare money for college. As such, they try to have workplaces near each other, but Florian is left out by his much earlier preparations. Instead, he has opted for a place near Mrs Flamand’s office, just in case he needs to see her in a hurry. It is not the most fulfilling activity he has ever had, but it pays decently and he needs this money, so he shrugs off the boredom and soreness at the end of the day by thinking of the pay check and his future studies.

In fact, he gets great enjoyment from following the instruction he got sent early in the summer as a confirmation for his enrolment in Lakanal. He has bought most of the books required for the Literature and language classes, got far more lenient on Philosophy and especially on History. He has nothing against the latter –in fact, he was a great fan of his former teachers on this – but they are the most expensive books for what seems to be a limited use.

 

He starts class back in early September, so when he tells Roxanne about it, she almost pleads him to let her drive him there. To be fair, Florian did not have the time or money to get his own driver’s license: he made sure to have his road code before it, but he cannot drive a car himself and it is otherwise very difficult to get from Colombes to Sceaux, so he accepts what she calls an “impromptu road trip!”. It is the best day he has spent in a while, laughs shared and remembering old stories from their previous years.

“To think I dated a boy!” Roxanne seems to tell herself aloud as she tries to keep her calm in the middle of a traffic jam. “Now that’s something I didn’t expect. To think you were still closeted a couple months ago… How has it been?”

“To be honest, it feels so much different. I get stares and some people still call me ‘miss’, but I suppose that’s to be expected. Tell me, does my voice sound bad?”

“No, you sound like… a normal dude? Well,” she seems to correct herself, “a guy whose voice is changing, but that makes sense considering it’s like a second puberty or something. Don’t worry, you’re doing great Flo!”

He blushes slightly at the compliment before replying “thank you”.

 

There still are formalities to fill when they arrive to the school. Its grandeur is not reflected in most of the pictures he has seen of it: imposing buildings carved in stone, surrounded by the green of the grass shining in early September’s summer sun. This truly looks like a dream school, one with a rather expensive dorm and lifestyle, but he has the money for it. His summer job and his financial helps for being a student living on his own are all going to this and he hopes the part-time position as a cashier he has found not too far from Lakanal itself will help his finances.

When they arrive to the desk to fill in the last-minute details, such as exact option classes and installing in the dorms, he is the first surprised when the secretary calls him “Florian” without a shred of hesitation. She does hesitate when glancing up to them, hesitating between the short-haired Roxanne and the assigned-female-at-birth Florian, but she has otherwise no difficulty continuing the process.

 

It is when they are _en route_ for the dorm that Roxanne fully expresses her surprise about this. She has been used to administrations calling him by his obsolete name that she is perplexed now that he does not. To this, Florian replies with the proudest smile that his enrolment in Lakanal’s preparatory class is the first step of his “administrative transition”.

Even if Roxanne is his closest friend and the one who has seen him at his most vulnerable, he still tries to hide how soothing it was to hear the secretary call him anything but a female name. He has worked on changing his name legally ever since he turned eighteen and got disowned, steadily writing his actual first name on everything, from his bank account to his identity papers. He has stalled on his driver’s license so it could have this, the real way he refers to himself, with a photo of his actual face.

 

Once at the dorm, he fills a bit more paperwork, mostly focused on medical information and who to call in case he feels ill. He writes down the number of Mrs Flamand, even if she lives in Colombes, because she is the closest he has to a parent nowadays. He gets the key to his room and another for the post-secondary-only door to the dorm, granting him access to where he is going to sleep. He makes sure to check if it really was remembered that he lives there on the weekends and holidays, to ensure any paper is sent to Roxanne’s home, list goes on. His parents do not need to know where he has actually gone.

When they arrive to his room, on the second floor’s boys building, he is the first to arrive to his room. He says hi to the boys and parents he comes across in the corridor, wondering if they will be in his class or if they are either second-years or in the other similar courses to his. In any case, most if not all of them refer to him as a young man, calling him “sir”, not even noticing how weird his changing voice sounds like. He can see Roxanne winking at him every time he gets called a boy.

 

Classes start in the afternoon, so they quickly unpack everything. There are three beds, a small working space and a tiny bathroom with two sinks, clearly meant to just be a quick place to brush one’s teeth (and shave, in men’s case) because of the main bathrooms being collective showers and toilets. A classic, he thinks, considering this seems to be the overwhelming norm in every dorm in the country. He picks the bed closest to the desks, filling his dresser with clothes and some space in the bathroom with a few things here and there. Unpacking his razor reminds him of the seemingly silly joy he feels to finally be able to shave something other than his developing body hair.

Before they part for the afternoon introductory classes, Roxanne wants to go through the “moving list” she has prepared before they left with him. He has made sure to have found a new therapist in Sceaux, a nearby doctor, a supermarket to buy anything he could need… Keeping the note in his belongings, he hugs Roxanne one last time as she leaves the premises and he goes to attend his very first class. His objective is clear: make a name for himself and see if he can make a couple friends, especially in his dorm room.

 

 


	4. Pink Tulips

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello yes I live for these three dorks' friendship so get ready for more of it.  
> The "Lakanal arc" is going to be a tad longer than the first "arc" (which was high school) because I have a lot more things to introduce with Henri and Christian, but the arc after this one is going to be even longer than that.  
> I hope y'all gonna enjoy even gritter stuff about being trans uwu

Starting class in a new place, with a whole new group of people, means Florian can live as such, as Florian, without having to explain he just has not “become a boy”. To them, he will be a boy, so he feels less anxious around the girls and boys of his class. Without a surprise, just like his high school classes, his comrades are mostly female: a norm in the literature fields, overwhelmingly dominated by women. Seeing them does not make him too dysphoric anymore: he feels separated enough from them when the teachers call him by his name, when it is featured on his new cafeteria magnetic card.

When he thinks back on how he is in the boys’ part of the dorm, he still wonders on how this is possible, how far he has come, and the anxiety of passing is back again. He does get some suspicious stares from other people in the class, perhaps because he still looks effeminate for a guy his age despite the growing facial hair and his voice sounding deeper by the day.

 

His timetable is messy because of the disparate options his classmates have taken. He is pained at the idea of having to go through Latin classes yet again, but he has resigned himself because he knows he will know the language for a few more years before he can stop attending classes for it. Otherwise, it does not seem to bad, leaving him enough free spots to place his mandatory oral tests there. However, it is better than he was getting himself ready for, so he goes back to the dorms happy and thinking of whether or not he is going to settle his desktop computer tonight or tomorrow. He will have to ask his roommates.

This a whole new concept to him. He is an only child and he lived on his own for a few months when his parents kicked him out. He has never had to share his room with someone for more than a couple nights at a friend’s, where he was the guest anyway. He hopes from the depths of his heart that they will get along nicely, ready to do all the efforts to be their friend and… hide everything he cannot show them.

_I truly realize I was lucky there. I didn’t realize fully how much my social spheres had changed in a single blow, but I was still terrified in case what had happened with whatever I had known of my family was going to happen._

 

As soon as he realizes he will also have to hide his real identity, Florian panics slightly. Before now, everyone around him knew he was assigned female at birth, that he had a female body, that his previous name was feminine. This is not the case now and, while it opens so many different possibilities, it means he has to conceal his shameful secrets anywhere he can.

As such, Florian writes down a mental list of all things he can and cannot hide. He can hide his binders, his hormones, his menstruation equipment (as much as he does not need these anymore, considering they are slowing down with the testosterone injections), perhaps even the fact he is essentially homeless once he steps outside of the dorm. He, however, cannot hide the desktop computer already settled there, his appointments with the therapist, the fact his body looks so… odd. When he looks at himself in the mirror of the small bathroom they have, he cannot help but notice how teenaged he looks compared to everyone else. He looks younger because of the tiny spots of zits which have resurfaced, the badly-tamed facial hair he is so proud of, his lowering voice he tries his hardest to make sound natural despite the sudden changes it does.

_It was a difficult time to look at my own reflection, to be entirely earnest. It was finally me, of course, so it had this comfortable feeling of “this is really who I am on the inside showing” rising inside my chest every time I looked at myself for the day, but it also resonated with how ugly teenage years look, except I was already supposed to be an adult._

 

His roommates are two guys from his class, which means he gets to share the room with people he already has to share classes with. Their names are rather blurry, the fault to having a class packed with thirty-or-so people all hand-picked by professors, but he knows he already plans on befriending some people from the future Modern Literature majors. From all the specialties available here for second year, his favourite clearly is Modern Literature and he feels like he will already pick this one. Perhaps it is too soon, too early in the year to speak this boldly, but he is already certain he will not pick English, German, Spanish or Classic Literature. Perhaps History, it does not sound too bad on second thought, but it is still less interesting than recent literature.

The first guy has said he wanted to be a History specialist in class earlier, Christian Coulombel. He is tall, auburn-haired, brown-eyed, he wears glasses and seems to like buttoned shirts. As such, he is a man of style and taste: there is this bias of looking at a man and thinking, “this is what I want to look like once I’ve fully transitioned”. He seems to be a man of factual reading, considering the very pragmatic books piled on his personal desk, which is not surprising coming from who seems to be a historian-to-be.

The second one is, if he remembers correctly, a future English specialist, Henri Drappé. His hair is short and blond, his eyes are blue, he wears contacts and buttoned shirts with bowties. Another man of taste, with a deep passion for British literature judging by the books he has settled on his personal bookshelf. He has said out loud he saw himself as a translator or an interpret later in life.

Meanwhile, Florian still does not know what he wants to do with his life, apart from finishing his transition and not think about all this feminine stuff again. Perhaps landscapist is not too late to pick now.

 

Their first nights as roommates feel a bit awkward. He has never really learnt to talk with boys: aside from Lilian, whom he hopes to remain in contact with, he was stuck with being a girl speaking to girls, “gals being pals” as Roxanne would have put it. He does not know where to start, really: books? Where they come from? What they think of their professors? Perhaps he should let them speak first. Perhaps they know socializing better than he does.

His instincts do not seem to lie: Henri is the one who starts the conversations. One of the first things Florian learns is that his two roommates have known each other ever since high school: they were attending the same place, just not the same classes. Christian is an Economics and Sociology major and is taking the confirmed Latin classes. Henri is bilingual, lived in Britain when he was younger and loves British culture to the point of having Earl Grey tea and a clandestine boiler inside his closet. Compared to them, Florian is just a timid Literature graduate from a not-so-prestigious school in a city mostly unknown it seems.

“Oh, I used to live in Colombes,” Henri says. “It was before I lived in Dover. I don’t remember much from it.”

 

While he was afraid of being unable to befriend anyone, Florian surprises himself when he thinks of how relatable his classmates actually are. He tries to get closer to the other future Modern Literature specialists he attends Latin classes with. They discuss novels and poetry, bringing back his love for Hugo’s _Contemplations_ to the surface. Some of them stare down at him for being so “casual”, so he tries getting into other poets to see if it is better somewhere else. Instead, he finds himself falling in love with Aragon’s style and life story, but also gets attracted to even more of Hugo’s writing.

He gets along with another Modern Literature specialist on that topic: Julian Forgeron, who comes from deeper in the country. Florian can tell by his accent: it sounds northern, for the lack of a better term, with contract syllables and slightly deformed vowels. They discuss these poems, promise to have a session where they will read their favourite pieces from _The Contemplations_ at least once during their two years here.

 

Christian and Henri do not question the presence of his desktop computer, so he allows them to use it for research and miscellaneous purposes. Christian comments on how the beast is starting to grow old and tired: after all, it got bought when they were in their early teens, so it shows signs of aging. Florian makes a note to himself to buy something far less space-consuming next time. They lend their books to each other, tell the others about the books they have read so it is more knowledge and less work for everyone else.

What is originally sessions to help each other with their personal difficulties (Christian’s is German, Henri’s is History and his is Philosophy) eventually becomes a fun time between friends. Compared to their classmates also living in the dorm, especially the four girls who keep getting into arguments inside their room according to what he can hear from his fellow Modern Literature specialists, they get along especially well. Perhaps it is because of their different yet compatible personalities: neither of them is prone to fighting or arguing, and they all respect each other’s differences. There is little to no tension in their room.

 

And yet, Florian feels almost paranoid at times. Whenever he sees either of his roommates get a bit too close to his closet, he feels his heart beat faster, almost as if trying to warn him against the potential dangers. He does not have a lock on it: he does not have the money to do so. His therapy sessions, dorm costs, weekend food, book budget and his testosterone shots cost him too much to allow him even the slightest outside spending. The school’s library is not enough, so he is willing to sacrifice a lock for them. Maybe he will try buying one when he has less money to spend on books.

The anxiety rushing through his veins when he is in their room is mostly about the secrets he is hiding from them. He needs to get his testosterone shot every Thursday in the afternoon in a fear to deregulate his levels which are finally stabilizing, but he cannot do that at school where the nurse would try to control it and not when his roommates are around either. He does not want to explain… no, he does not even want them to know about it all. He just wants them to believe he is an ordinary guy with no defect.

He will not let them see he is a “boy with something missing”.

 

When he gets some leftover money from his expenses, he decides to start on getting a driver’s licence. He will need to drive himself in places once he is out of Lakanal and his first year is not as busy as he thought it would be, so it makes it the perfect timing to get it. It is expensive and he knows this, but he decides to balance it out with less money going to his books and sessions, which he needs less of anyway. His roommates support him in his decisions, albeit they do not hide their worries about how much he seems to be running himself to the ground at times.

_I’ve always been a hardworking man. Work was what got me into the selective Lakanal: work is also what got me out of my parents’ misery, my original misery. My physical health has never been the greatest, and I suffered the consequences of that way quicker than I would have liked to._

 

Wearing a binder and attending this many classes with barely any break is tiring for his chest. He has to stop wearing at some point during the day and, as such, opts for a baggier wardrobe in case he has to take it off for any given amount of time in public. Presentations with professors require him to look pristine, so he makes an effort for these and wears button-up shirts, but otherwise he prefers his hoodies over these shirts. Both are lifesavers: he can even wear some of his “girl” ones, those he never sold because Juliette pointed out they still made him look male if put on correctly, reducing the cost of having to renew his wardrobe. Sparing summer job money was not a bad decision.

Because of the shame his chest represents, he is careful around his roommates. He knows he cannot go shower at the same time as them in case his binder slips under the door and that he cannot allow them to see him shirtless. It would require too many explanations. They could reject him if they knew who they were _actually_ talking to. He is already lying about going through late puberty: they do not need to know it is his second one, that he aborted his first one, ditched oestrogen for testosterone because it is who he has been. He wakes up first and showers last to avoid coming out again. Better be safe than sorry… even if it is tiring.

_It wasn’t that I distrusted Chris and Henri. I was loathing myself for what I looked like, not wanting to admit this acne and ever-changing body was the result of what I considered to be a birth defect. I didn’t want anyone but me to endure this, looking at that disfigured body belonging to someone who wasn’t me and which I was trying to make mine. Maybe I would be more open about it later, I thought._

 

At times, Henri comments on how he seems breathless. Even if he hates lying, Florian finds an excuse for it which does not involve giving away his secret: it was a hard day. He knows he will have to take off that binder sooner that he would have wanted, but he tries consoling himself by focusing on how his chest has grown smaller with all the dead tissue from binding. It has been more than a year, and even if the reason why everything feels less dysphoric is rather disgusting to think about, he cannot help but feel a bit nicer from this.

It turns out it is not because of his binder. Winter came in far earlier than he expected and, like every year, he falls ill around this time. Usually, it is nothing more than the common cold congesting his nose and voice for a week or so, at worst it was a pharyngitis tiring his voice out, but that year, it is the influenza. He hates feeling this drained and the sensation that he is this close to losing his voice. He has presentations, he has homework, holidays are not close enough yet. His roommates notice and urge him to go home. Henri threatens to warn the nurse if he does not go back home, Christian tries to reason both parties by making sure their sick roommate is not dying yet.

The circumstances force Florian out of his zone of mysterious comfort and step up. Even when his voice is almost gone, the mere action of talking threatening to rip apart his throat in coughing fits, when the fever makes his brain feels like it is boiling inside his skull, he finds the strength, or rather the lack of, to tell them he has no home to go to. No parents to take care of him, no way to go back to Colombes. If he stays in this dorm room, attending class so nobody knows he is sick and exhausted, it is because he does not have the luxury to go home to get nursed back to health. He tears up when he is over with his sob story, trying to hide the most pitiful details of it to retain a little of dignity.

 

He is ready to get glared at for what is objectively a reckless move, but instead, Henri softens up and Christian almost falls from the chair next to the bed. They exchange a concerned glance, one Florian can still distinguish the aura of despite his glassy eyes and the glasses fighting against his myopia absent from his face as he falls back into his pillow, coughing. Christian puts back the cold washcloth on his friend’s forehead, Henri gets some medicine from his personal pharmacy.

“You should have told us before, Florian,” he says as he puts a glass of water on the bedside table along with fever reducers. “We could have helped you sooner.”

“Tell us next time, okay? We’re here to help each other. If there’s nobody to help you, we will.”

 

_The guys made me spill the first happy tears of my life. I was so thankful for them, to share this room with such kind souls who preferred helping me out instead of giving me a stern lesson and giving me away. This sickness was the moment I realized I could trust them way more than I originally thought._

_I simply wish it didn’t come up the way it eventually did._


	5. Watching the Orange Lilies Bloom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Damn, this chapter is much longer than I expected (and much longer than the rest of this story). I hope you'll enjoy it nonetheless.  
> I planned it to be the end of Lakanal Arc, but I guess this won't be happening today. Oh well. More story the better, right?  
> It doesn't have as many flowers as I wanted it to be, so expect more flowers to come soon.
> 
> Also holy shit, warning for intense depictions of dysphoria in this chapter. I don't guarantee you'll have a nice time going through Flo's dark thoughts.

His first year of college goes by peacefully, as he is passing it with flying colours. He is one of the best elements of the class, the quantity of books he reads finally paying off when it comes to Literature essays. Latin is less glorious, as he does not put much effort into it, but it still convinces the professor responsible for it to grant him the points he needs to pass the year in the end.

The almost-tranquillity allows him to perfect his fake Parisian accent and speech. He has been copying his professors ever since the year started in the scope to remove every bit of his origins as possible. He needs to erase everything he once thought he was: a low-class girl with dreams too big for her little life. Removing his Lorrain accent, the one he got commented on by a few classmates upon arriving in Lakanal, is a way for him to get rid of his filthy past. For someone who was almost homeless and in the dirt of the situation, Florian sure looks fine.

 

However, the tranquillity is never whole. His dysphoria is nibbling at him any way it can through the testosterone he has set up against it. The more his body changes, the closer he gets to be himself physically and socially, the more his anxiety rises in his veins. What if someone discovers he has been faking his crotch from the beginning? What if his roommates think he is a drug addict by finding the syringe and his hormones in his bedside table? What if they all find out he is not “like the other boys”?

The more he advances, the more he gets impatient. It always feels like it is not quick enough, not soon enough. The changes are slowing down: his voice is starting to get stable, not very low but still sounding genuinely masculine, his acne outbreak is on the slow side, his silhouette includes less and less hips. His new ID card, which he has painfully received through exploiting a few loopholes, is showing the right picture and sex. Finally.

 

Inside the dorm room, everyone is slowly unveiling their secrets to each other. Henri confesses he dislikes his parents and decided to live in the dorms not because it was complicated for him to go to Lakanal every morning, but because that way he would get rid of them for most of the week. Christian tells them about his strained relationships with his former classmates who decided to either attend regular college or other Parisian preparatory classes, and Sceaux was a way to escape from them. Henri struggled with depression during high school, Christian has skin diseases still preventing him from having the confidence to engage in relationships.

Florian is surprised to learn both of his roommates are single. Henri comes out to them as homosexual, thus why he is struggling to find a partner: he is afraid of homophobia, remaining mostly closeted around their classmates, having difficulties finding someone to share his life with. Christian is plagued with a previous abusive relationship leaving him feeling like a broken boyfriend, and he is taking his time to heal. Florian himself has the issue of being transgender and not open about it. Who would want that?

 

At times, his hand is about to write that name he used to have instead of his on tests and homework he needs to give back, but his wrist always spasms out of it and he writes the right thing instead. His professors are aware of his shady background because he had to explain before why it was impossible to get in touch with his parents, but he knows very well this is just the tip of the iceberg. It is better if everyone remains blissfully unaware.

_Honestly, I still stand by this. Nobody but my close friends and family know about it. From everyone I currently know, I can make a full list of everyone who is aware: Chris, Henri, Rox, Eudes, Lilian, Julian… and you, of course._

 

He adapts to it all habit by habit. He takes off his binder on the weekend, as told by his doctors, when Christian and Henri go back home for a couple days to see their family once the test is over and everyone who actually has a place to stay in goes back to. Going “back home” has become a foreign feeling, in fact: he has not gotten a real place to call home ever since he realized his parents were going to rob him of one someday, of the one he had always known. The flat in Colombes was at best a temporary solution, his dorm room just does not feel like home because of the restrictions and public nature of it all. It just does not feel intimate, knowing someone has been there before and that someone will be there after, every year, until the end of this dorm room.

He gets used to living on the weekend entirely on his own. He takes advantage of the breakfast on Saturday mornings and the dinner Sunday evenings the dorm’s cafeteria serves as two actual meals he does not have to worry about. The rest is split between groceries stocked in his closet and ready-to-eat lunches he can buy here and there. After all, it is a rare moment of almost complete serenity, the dorm barely inhabited during the weekends and especially the school holidays they get. It would be a waste of an opportunity not to profit from the odd silence.

 

As such, his first year of college is split between a few different types of days. There are the class days, the presentation days, the weekend days and, most of all, the mock exam days. They are especially exhausting and, well, his weekend job does not make it easier. By the end of December and May’s mock exam sessions, he is glad to know he will be able to sleep off exhaustion once his Sunday shift is finished. The professors look either sympathetic or downright condescending whenever they stare at him and his dark rings during presentations, stuck between admiring a young boy’s efforts to maintain himself afloat in a difficult condition and despising the mere thought of a student of his kind having this piss-poor of a situation in the first place.

_I’m pretty sure this would be called “classicism” in today’s times, but back then, we had no word for it. Perhaps I should have gone against these judgements, but it wasn’t really worth the added effort._

 

And yet, Florian rises to the top of the class. His readings from high school to ignore the hard truth of his life and the way he winds up after shifts pay off. Serious, disciplined, mature, remembering easily, always open to criticism despite how hard it can get. He is defined as a model student on his semester bulletins, despite rising concern about how tired he looks. Most of them point out a lack of personality: a solid A-student, but without the punch needed to get into the prestigious ENS of Ulm Street.

_I think it was the ever-growing idea that I was too bland and expectable at the entry exam that pushed me even further. My second semester’s appreciations were already more in my favour on that field, even if they kept pointing even more at a poor physical, and perhaps mental, condition. They weren’t wrong._

 

The first year of college ends in a hot summer season, at the end of June. It is saddening for the three roommates to leave each other’s company next year. After all, it has a surprising good experience to him: he feels understood and respected, although privacy was scarce and limited on the weekends. When filling his dorm papers for next year, he gets asked by Christian and Henri if he would mind being with them another year. The usually secretive Florian answers with an overwhelmingly happy cry, an “of course I don’t!” his soul pours into his mouth.

It is just a goodbye. They promise to spend time together next year, even if they do not share the same room next year, as they put away their own belongings and leave with the help of their families. Christian has his siblings, Henri has his newly-found boyfriend and younger sister. Roxanne has come to help him too, but because of traffic jams in the region, he is left all alone for a few hours in the almost-empty room.

He feels empty too, now, but he shakes his head and think of summer.

 

The summer break goes by in a heartbeat. This time, Florian has found himself a better holiday job for the next two months: instead of being a cashier, he is helping at a library during regular employees’ vacations. Being surrounded by old and newer books feels like paradise. People call him the right way: even if it would get old for anyone but him, the way mothers tell their children “Say thank to the boy right there!” or ask him “Excuse me sir, could you help me with something please?” makes him swoon on the inside. Perhaps the badge he wears on his shirt, given to him to signal the clients he is a helper at the library and not just a student reading something there, is also giving this out.

The fact he works there also allows him to read during his breaks and study right after work is done on the books for the next year. It almost feels like home, when he has to rent a flat for two months because Lakanal’s dorm closes for the two-month break. The other staff members are kind and helpful, giving him advice for his student life inside and outside of school, express how they are going to miss him and how much they would love to see him visit them from time to time if he ever has the opportunity to do so. Among these tips are some about reducing the cost of life, mostly about groceries.

 

Despite the happiness he feels when working at the library, his summer break is also reminding him of what he has postponed for most of the school year: his medical appointments. Aside from the therapist he sees every month on a Saturday afternoon, he has to go to a few other specialists and doctors. Included in these is his gynaecologist, the very symbol of his condition.

The very idea of having to see a _gynaecologist_ and not a proctologist is making him nauseous. Every time he puts a foot inside that waiting room, with its pinkish-purple chairs and pastel blue linoleum floor, he feels sick and out of place. It reminds him something is wrong inside of him, something he wants to get rid off but does not have the funds to go through with it. Since he has to wait, he remembers the sentence his Latin professor always tell them and which he cannot deny but applies to so many elements in his life: _abstinere et sustinere_ , “abstain and endure”. He breathes in, breathes out and wait.

In itself, waiting for the gynaecologist to take him in for his appointment should not be this difficult. After all, it is easy to wait for anything as long as he has a fascinating book to read and take notes on. Usually, in a waiting room like this, he reads casually, with no notes taken. However, this is not any waiting room: it is a waiting room that asphyxiates him. He is surrounded by pregnant women, single or accompanied, all speaking among themselves about pregnancy, how many pregnancies they’ve had before this one, commenting on pregnancy-themed posters on the walls, complaining about pregnancy-related issues. And this is always the last streak before Florian feels like crying, rushing to the men’s bathroom to spill tears.

 

“Young man,” one of these women asks him this year, “what brings you here?”

She is rubbing her stomach. He feels nauseous again.

“When there’s a boy this young here, it’s to accompany his girlfriend. Where’s yours?” a second woman adds.

He tries not to stare at them in disgust, hides his uneasiness behind a façade.

“Perhaps she’s in the bathroom,” the first woman says, realizing he is alone at the moment.

Florian hesitates on either lying, considering the opportunity given to him, or tell the truth. They arrived after him: he was on page two-hundred-and-five when he arrived, on page two-hundred-and-forty-two when they did. They will know the gynaecologist will not call for any girl, but for a “Florian Moinot”. Maybe he will see them again.

“I’m… I’m here for myself,” he replies earnestly, ready to delve back into his book and pray the MP3 player in his pocket his roommates bought him for his birthday works properly.

 

The two women stare at him as if he has just said some irrational nonsense. To be fair, they have probably never met someone like him, someone with the wrong genitals having to suffer the consequences of having these. He is just “a man with a vagina”. This is not too difficult to comprehend, right?

“How come?” the second woman asks, either fascinated or disgusted.

“I just need to…?” he sputters back, hoping the doctor is going to call him in soon.

The first woman almost glares at him, eyes squinting shut enough to seem like they are analysing his entire body.

“Oh, then you can have kids too, right?” she says, a smirk creeping its way on her face as her eyes fixate on his abdomen.

“I wish my man could do that. It’d be easier,” the other woman comments with a similar glance.

 

A sudden wave of nausea takes a hold of him, from his unwanted parts to his mouth, eyes watering beyond reason, glasses blurring. Those women are sickening, vile and disgusting. What they said was wrong to the point of bringing him to the limits of bearable dysphoria. He feels lightheaded from all the thorns suddenly appearing all over his body, squeezing the air out of his chest as if his binder was suddenly too tight. He hates getting reminded of all of this mess. He wants to be a normal boy. He wants to be anywhere but the one place to remind him of how bad this all is.

The door opens.

“Florian Moinot?” a masculine voice calls for.

If he could have, the boy would have taken the hand and ran with it.

 

_Why I feel like this should be told? I know this sounds very cliché and unnecessarily overblown, but I also feel like this needs to be said. I want people not to look at us and think, “oh, this person has the wrong set of genitals, that means they can do this thing and it’ll be exotic!”. It needs to get out there. I want it to get out there and spread the right information._

_The discomfort of this visit made me realize something: I’d never be fully safe from being thought off as “exotic” or “special” by people who didn’t understand what it felt to be me. Despite all the supportive people I’ve known in my life, it’s always these two women who come to my mind whenever I get asked why I’m not openly transgender. This is why._

_If I want to feel special, it’s not because of something I didn’t choose._

 

He gets his driver’s license, but he does not have a car, so he just slips the little piece of pink paper in his wallet and hope to get a car soon enough, probably used, probably after he is out of khagne class. He lands a small job as a cashier again in a small shop near the school on weekends. His library job is too far for him to get it again just for days where he does not have classes, but he still knows it is better than having no money on hand.

This all feels like the “adult life” the teachers were speaking about in high school. The life they would not want later, why they should be enjoying being young and free, if not just to stop complaining about the lack of freedom given to teenagers more and more aware of the liberties of adults. Turning eighteen was an Eldorado to reach back then: the possibility to own a car, drink alcohol, buy whatever they wanted, partying hard and maybe vote.

 

Inside his temporary place to call home again, yet another flat he will forget about next year, he feels like he has matured too quickly. He is merely nineteen and he senses most of his classmates are still happily unaware of how difficult living on their own can be. He cannot blame them: in fact, he _envies_ them. He, too, wants to come home to a loving family on the weekend and being able to hug someone instead of a plushie he has kept ever since he was a child. No matter how much he loves Soleil, a pastel brown stuffed rabbit with a sunflower clipped to her left ear, she will never have the human heat of a sibling, a parent, a friend could have.

Roxanne is too far, Juliette even further, Lilian has stopped responding and all his college friends are now on vacation, so Florian just crashes onto his bed after work and tries not to cry from the loneliness. He will just satisfy himself with the relationships he has with temporary workmates, hoping it will be enough.

_It wasn’t enough._

 

The issue is, when he gets lonely like this, his mind often loops through negative thoughts. Studying all the books for next year, reading essays, writing notes and scribbling hearts whenever he likes something, working at the library, staring at himself in the mirror and realizing he will never be a “real boy” unless he seriously mans up in the eyes of an unforgiving society. He cries in his bed, whenever there is no author or thesis to be thought about and all is left is the toxic cocktail of solitude, blank-page syndrome and dysphoria.

_There was always this part of me who was screaming to be soft and feminine in a time where I couldn’t afford being so. I would use being in a literary field as an excuse to be feminine, to excuse it to myself in a way I could brush off the feeling of “you’re not manly enough” as just societal codes. It really was society’s gender roles speaking against me, against the type of boy I was. In these moments, I almost thanked dysphoria for reminding me I was an actual man: just not a manly-man like so many people would want to be._

 

In an attempt to calm down, Florian thinks of how far he has come ever since he realized it. He went from a girl not getting taken seriously, ignoring his true nature, to someone actually gendered correctly most if not all of the time. Moving to Sceaux, trading everything for something else, changing social spheres helped with it: his current classmates and professors have not known _her_ at all. To them, he has never been _her_. To them, he has always been Florian; and that is what should matter beforehand. Not the past, but the present and the future.

He stares at his medical papers, disguised bills, as he calculates his August spending to determine a better trajectory for September. He has refused freezing his eggs before starting HRT a year ago: looking at a reminder of that is pleasing in a way he cannot describe properly. He gets reminded he needs to get some parts removed if he does not want hormone disbalance in three years at most. He does not have the money to afford it, so he writes it on a special diary he has kept hidden from anyone but Roxanne.

_I almost threw the diary away, once I was finished with most surgeries, if not all. Yet, I kept it because you told me it would matter whenever I would feel like I’ve not made any progress. You were right. It is a keepsake for all these times of despair I’ve overcome._

 

When the summer break ends, Florian is sure he is the only one happy to go back to school, as he tidies up his belongings again, ready to move back into the dorm and perhaps, just perhaps, find himself grouped with Christian and Henri in the same room. Books under the arm, head full of idealistic thoughts about the year to come and the end of his pitiful loneliness, he enters Lakanal’s campus with a smile and finds himself strangely, yet warmly, happy to see what is a prison to so many of his classmates.

_To the happy few._


	6. In the Field of Anemones and Peonies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes I love flower symbolism in my titles even if I forget to actually put flower symbolism inside the chapters themselves around 50% of the time.  
> This chapter was meant to be the end of the Lakanal Arc but I got carried away again, so instead you can have scenes I really wanted to talk about for a while.

His second year of college starts on a much different note. Instead of a long yet tranquil year of learning methods and base knowledge to build solidly on top of, this year begins under the reign of rush and hurry, a short nine-month period leading to the most difficult entry exam in the country. It is but a race against the clock to see if someone, anyone will be able to enter Ulm on the following year.

Right when he thinks he is not as ambitious as people make him out to be, Florian realizes he is striving for this school, for its paid studies, for its idealistic environment for intellectuals like him. It feels like a need, a hunger that has just woken up because he has gotten more confident.

 

When he gets his dorm room assigned on the third floor rather than the second, hands filled with suitcases because of his trusty computer, he meets up with this year’s roommates putting their previous room’s decoration back on. As he realizes the reality of everything, noticing the number of beds going from four to three (their fourth roommate, supposedly an ECE student, never showed up), there is that dumb smile forming on his face.

“Oh Chris, look who’s back and grinning like a complete idiot,” Henri says, a smirk on his face as his eyes turns from the poster in his hands to the doorway.

“Welcome back, Flo!” Christian greets him with a less hidden excitement. “Glad to know we’re back together for this year too!”

 

As much as he wants to hug his closest friends in times where seeing Roxanne is close to impossible, Florian simply tries to brush his dumb smile away and shakes hands with both men, barely able to contain the intense relief pulsing through his nerves. It is a known territory. They are people he feels safe with. They are friends, they are close, and he can trust them. Everything will be fine, he repeats inside his thoughts as if trying to convince himself there was no way it could turn sour.

_To say I was glad to share a room with Henri and Chris is an understatement. I was deadly afraid of being in other men’s rooms, especially if they were other second-years from Lakanal I didn’t know at all. There were some people I had grown to dislike too, if not despise, and finding myself in their rooms would have put me on a serious edge when I didn’t need it. I partially attribute my eventual success in life to being in this specific room with these specific persons._

_I wish I had to words to truly thank Henri and Chris for everything, but I suppose they’d call me sappy for thanking them again._

 

His joy downgrades when he discovers his new professors. Some of these names are unknown, some are familiar, so he gets happily surprised by his new History professor but turns bitter when he sees his main one for the year. His specialty professor, the Modern Literature one, is an old woman who looks like she dates back to the previous century, with her grey hair tied in a bun and faded red glasses on her wrinkled face. Compared to their charismatic, if not handsome, professor from the year before, this is a serious downgrade in aesthetic, he thinks.

_Anne-Lise Bouquinerie was my tenth Literature professor. Needless to say, she remains one of the worst figures I’ve seen in my life, from her unjustified cruelty to her complete lack of humanity towards students. Nobody knew how despicable it could get until I got hit by it._

 

Between two classes and study sessions, Florian spends time with classmates. Julian and he strengthen their bonds over their common misfortune in specialty classes and shared opinions on the books they had to read this year. These classes feel far less long when they manage to sneak a few unauthorized words written on bits of paper, slipping under the strict figures as they find a way to make what is an exhaustingly unpleasant time, an enjoyable one.

In a way, this is what this second year feels like to him. The hurry of the year and the timer ticking, towering over their heads in terror make him afraid of the future. The main goal is not to break under the undeniable pressure on everyone’s shoulders. There are results to provide at the end of the year as to have the shimmer of the hope they keep getting fed by the professors and administration. As such, friends try to make it good for each other: after all, none of his friends’ objectives overlap with his.

 

In October, after reading the dorm’s rules for the third time, Christian proudly tells his roommates they can get a plant in the room to add some colour. Even if he does not see how much this could add, Florian agrees: a flower cannot hurt to have, after all, as long as they all take care of it. Henri scoffs at the proposition and accepts with a grin, telling Christian to run to the flower shop before it closes and pick something great. “We’ll repay you after the fact, well, if Flo still has money,” he adds. Before they knew it, Christian has already run off the room and outside the dorm.

Barely thirty minutes afterwards, he comes back with an orchid in a small plastic white pot. Its pink with lilac tones, in bloom, looking almost eternal seen like this. There is something about this flower inspiring something inside Florian, igniting an inspirational fire he has not felt in a long time, and he keeps his hand from rushing to the nearest pen and writing down some verses he knows he is going to find awful merely hours after the fact.

 

“Here she is!” he says with a wide smile on his face as he introduces them to their new companion. “She needs a name, what you think?”

“Hmm…” Florian muses aloud, trying to come up with the best name he can. “Roxanne?”

Henri snickers at his answer before going through with his own. “I’d go with Elizabeth.”

“I was thinking of Catherine…” Christian mutters, looking at the orchid he has put on an unoccupied desk from when the room was for four people.

 

_I couldn’t be able to exactly describe what I felt when hearing that name again. I should have been over it a long time before this, considering I had officially been called Florian for almost two years at that point, and yet… I felt shivers run down my spine and my face lose all its colour. I didn’t want to hear it again, in a stubborn will to forget about the past. To this day, I still hate to hear that name again, but I eventually learnt not to associate bad memories to it as soon as I got students named this way. It wasn’t their fault. It wasn’t mine either, probably._

Florian freezes on the spot, staring at the plant, trying not to feel the dysphoria washing over him like waves crashing on the shore. He cannot betray these feelings in front of them, so he swallows his pride in and prepares himself for a straining conversation.

 

“I like it more, actually,” Henri says. “You can even pronounce it with an English accent. _Catherine_ sounds like a queen’s name. Almost regal, in a way.”

“And you, Flo? What do you think?”

They both stare at him as he tries to collect himself.

“Flo, you’re okay?” Christian asks again, worry appearing all over his face. Henri does not look much more serene about it.

“I…” Florian stumbles on his words. “I don’t like it per say… I find it a bit… generic…?”

It is only half a lie, if he can remember when he was both unaware of what he was and still dislike his name. Half-lies are better than full lies, right?

“I mean,” Christian stutters, “it’s fine if you don’t like it, Flo! You looked ill the moment we mentioned it, so… it’s fine, okay? You have any other idea?”

“Chris is right,” Henri adds with his usual snarky smirk gone. “It’s just a plant’s pet name, nothing major to get this sick about. We’ll talk about it if you want us to. Do you have another proposition?”

Florian takes a breath out as his brain remembers the novel he is currently reading.

“What about Corinne? It sounds old school, I know, but…”

“I like it,” Henri interrupts him. “We can even spell it with circumflexes and Ks in case we want it to be khagne-like, if you see what I mean.”

“Corinne it is then, right?”

“Yeah. Let’s go with it.”

_This is when I got to know how much I could truly trust these guys._

 

They take turns for most things, as they need to take care of the cleaning and the plant now. Usually, they make it so the one who has the most presentations to make is exempt of most tasks, except watering Corinne as she requires little water to begin with. However, Florian insists on taking care of his own part of the bedroom: he needs to keep everything hidden away from the naked eye. When he really cannot, either because he is too busy with classes and homework or with work, he takes care of the most glaring on the weekend.

Just like the previous year, Christian and Henri do not stay on weekends, leaving Florian alone for a couple days where he knows he has full control over his secrets. He spends most of the Saturday at work anyway, only being in the dorm in the morning and the evening, and takes care of some Sunday shifts when he has an incapacitated colleague (this happens more often than he wishes it would, but at least, he earns additional money he can take into consideration for future spending). There is the lingering void left by the two friends, almost his brothers-in-arms, but he gets over it by focusing on books and working.

 

The future is always uncertain, so he starts looking into what it could all entail for. He needs to think about the surgeries he needs: he is fully aware he will have to get his ovaries removed in the next couple years if he wants to avoid hormonal issues, but he lacks the money to do so at the moment. Getting a top surgery seems like a nice offer too: as much as binding helps to alleviate dysphoria, and with the help of having a multiple of these, his ribs are not a fan of it as much as he is. It would be nice to truly walk around shirtless like he sees so many guys in the dorm do.

_I always checked my back because, as it turns out, I never had anyone to support me financially. I was earning my own money through allocations, student money and part-time jobs. I needed to spare money in case it was going south for me. I truly wished I wasn’t this greedy, back then, but it felt like a necessary evil. It’s always easy to look back and judge one’s actions as anything but good: it’s harder to judge these fairly._

 

The future is always uncertain, so life starts giving him lemons again. After months of stability and being stealth, not a single person even doubting he once was called anything else, threats come back again. His menstrual cycle has broken through his hormones multiple times by now, and he only gets more and more concerned. Does this mean he can get…? No, he is a mere virgin. This cannot happen to him. He shakes his head and delves back into his poems.

Winter rolls around when he feels pressure and stress start to take physical tolls on him. Frequenting sometimes sick clients as part of his job, making presentations in front of sick professors and being around sick classmates do not help with his health already weakened by the harsh cold of January and the constant weight over their shoulders. The more missing people there are, the worst it gets.

 

Florian knows he has gotten sick when his voice starts to break again during a presentation. His voice stopped changing what feels like years ago, so he is not used to it cracking this badly anymore. His roommates notice later than he thought they would: Henri is fresh out of his own case of the flu, Christian is busy putting together a presentation. This is great, he thinks, because this way he cannot worry them.

Being ill prevents him from binding much. This feels like taking three steps backwards, going back to a place he did _not_ want to be in anymore, and it keeps getting worse. His congested noise turns into a morbid cough, a few shivers turn into waves of chill wrecking his frame at times hourly, a migraine is settling in, louder and louder.

Eventually, people start asking questions. It is Henri and Christian first, noticing he is far colder than they are, asking if he is really fine. Florian lies: he is just fine. Then it is the History professor, after a presentation where he could not keep the cough inside for long periods, urging him to go home if he feels sick. Florian lies: he is just fine. Then it is Julian, during a specialty class, trying to check if his neighbour has a fever after feeling abnormal heat coming from the latter. Florian lies: he is just fine. He swears to everyone he feels good enough to be here, not to “go home”. Then it is his employer, giving him an illness leave before it gets too awful, and even if he wants to refuse he is forced to accept. Florian still lies: he is still not fine.

 

And yet, he succumbs to the illness after a week of feverishly fighting against it. On a Monday afternoon, his Modern Literature presentation in class turns sour, the professor barking insults at him for how “disappointing” and “incompetent” his commentary is, the travesty that his voice and “incoherent speech” are, other words flying right over his head. His throat hurts and his head spins even when he is sitting. He knows Christian and Henri are outside, hearing against the door and peeping through the windows of the classroom as they are waiting for him to finish, Julian sitting in the back and watching everything unfold before his very eyes. When he thinks he has most things in control, he cannot retain the most violent coughing fit he has had in days, eyes shutting and the wet feeling of viscous matters sitting in the back of his trachea getting out.

When his eyes open again, he sees Mrs Bouquinerie covered in red splatters and feels his consciousness run out. He gets up suddenly, gathering what little he has left on his table, and tries to run off, but all he does is getting dazed and dizzy. Soon enough, he feels Julian’s arms catch him and everything turns black.

_This has to be one of the most embarrassing memories of my life. As much as I despised her, I hadn’t planned on coughing up blood on her. Looking back on it, I suppose she deserved it for pushing me when I was clearly unwell and everyone else was insisting on me postponing this oral, but it was still impolite of me, don’t you think?_

 

What follows is a blur of events. Definitely bedridden for a few days, he notices his roommates panicking over the situation. The haze of his brain prevents him from understanding much of their words, but he knows for sure he has bronchitis and that they are not willing for him to “go home to a place that doesn’t exist”. In a fever-induced comatose state, coughing up blood and bacteria alike, he cannot think of much when he is conscious: the lonely dorm room, the constant change in temperatures, the feeling of wasting time by being this badly sick.

And the dysphoria.

_I’m not sure how most people would experience fever dreams in these cases. Mine were filled with getting stuck into a feminine body, reliving the day my parents disowned me, imagining everyone and everything say I was someone else entirely. Even when I was conscious and almost aware, I was plagued with delirium-like symptoms, seeing things that weren’t, hearing sounds that had never been._

_Needless to say, my spirit was mellowed down enough to let everything pass through with ease._

 

One stance of delirium, a symptom Henri and Christian did not know about yet, appeared on the Wednesday afternoon following. When they came back from class, at around quarter past three as usual, they find their roommate trapped inside the delirious vision of his parents on the day he left, the day he decided to live as a man once and for all. The unfortunate incident forces his brain back into his closet and his female persona, reacting to the wrong name, forgetting his current life was soon to be.

When he comes to, Florian is plagued with questions by Christian’s worried mouth and Henri’s concerned eyes. They want to know why he was saying so many strange things, mumbling about someone they did not know, why he was only reacting to the name they previously wanted to give to the orchid. New questions come up as they notice he tried to inject himself his hormones on the wrong day, syringe having rolled but not broken in the drawer of his bedside table, remembering all the other peculiar things they could not explain with anything but “Florian did it”.

 

Eyes tearing up, unable to read his roommates’ faces with the water and the glasses missing from his face, he takes a breath in, a breath out, wipes his tears, gets his glasses back on his nose. Florian sets out to explain everything, hoping his terrible cough and fevered brain will not hinder his intentions. He described dysphoria as he feels it, images flying across the room, links it to his artificial orphan situation, clarifies the syringe situation by stating this is for his hormonal treatment, that the drops of blood they found the other day in the bathroom were from him changing one evening. This was all his, and he is so sorry for this, pleads for their forgiveness and their acceptance.

Christian and Henri stare at each other for what feels like centuries with perplexed expressions, before turning back to him with unhidden smiles.

 

“Listen, Flo. I’m not sure I understand everything –hell, I can’t even know what it feels like to disconnect that way – but it doesn’t change anything to how we see you,” Christian says as he puts a hand on his friend’s shoulder from his chair. “I’m just glad you finally told us about it and trusted us enough.”

“Christian’s right,” Henri chimes in as he sits on the bed next to them. “We don’t really care what you were named before, or what body you’re born in, as long as you’re careful. We’re supposed to be intimate friends, aren’t we? We were wondering about all of this, but we never asked. I’m glad we’re getting this sorted out.”

“Guys, I…” The words struggle to come out of his throat, and he wants to thank them with every word in his vocabulary, but the relief of a year and a half hiding is taking a toll, so he settles for something simple. “Thank you so much, guys…”

 

Henri pushes him back into lying on his back as Christian puts back the wet washcloth dipped in their trusty bucket (as Florian actually owns it), Serge.

“Go back to sleep, we can tell you’ve had a rough time over there,” Christian tells him with the softest tone he has heard from him. “Don’t worry, we’ll take care of this while you recover. The profs know about your family and housing issues already.”

“You can’t recover if you don’t rest anyway, and since we don’t want to catch your death of bronchitis, you better recover quickly,” Henri scoffs before smirking.

“Don’t mind Henri’s comments, you know how he is,” Christian sighs with a faint smile. “It’s his way to tell you to get well soon.”

 

Speechless from the exhaustion, the lack of voice and the relief of the situation that has just unfolded despite the misfortunate circumstances, Florian cannot respond to them despite all the feelings going through his head, so he better do what he was told to and simply let go of his current concerns and focus on what he usually does not give himself the time to: himself, his health, what book he could read purely for his own pleasure with no background thought about the exam or what presentation he is going to have soon, and how nice his roommates… _friends_ are.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was the perfect occasion to tell in greater details (or actualize) two plot points that came up in two other stories with Florian as a main character: Hazed Visions and the fourth chapter of Sollicitude.  
> The scene about Corinne the orchid is the more detailed version of this scene as described in Hazed Visions:  
>  _“How’s it going with Flo, Chris?” he asks as he grabs a second chair and joins his roommates._  
>  _“Bad,” Christian replies, “very bad. He’s conscious, but he’s clearly not with us. He doesn’t even react to his first name, Henri! The only way to get his attention is to somehow call him Catherine.” ___  
>  _“Catherine? That doesn’t make sense.” ___  
>  _“I know, right? He even said once he hated that name, when we wanted to name the orchid. That’s weird he would react to that.” ___
> 
> Hazed Visions is actually a slighty (just slightly) outdated depiction of the scene between Henri, Christian and delirious Florian at the end of this chapter, but it itself comes from a detail in a piece of dialogue from Sollicitude:  
>  _Christian suddenly stepped in, with his raspy voice, as he scratched his beard._  
>  _“Henri, I don’t think Flo’s actually with us right now. It’s like he went back to 2004 all over again. That’s probably his fever playing tricks of him, remember when he took us for his deceased relatives back then? That was scary, he even referred to himself as a girl.” ___  
>  _“I-I-I’m not a g-g-girl!!” I screamed, until I almost coughed out a lung. In a swift reflex, I checked my own body. A deep inhale took me by surprise. ___  
>  _“Yeah, we knew that, don’t worry,” Henri rolled his eyes. ___
> 
> _The scene before happening with the Modern Lit prof, Mrs Bouquinerie, is actually a premire but based on another piece of dialogue later on in this chapter of Sollicitude:  
>  _I grabbed my glasses on the nightstand and put them on, finally seeing the both of them clearly._  
>  _“Well, thank you for coming visit me then… You’ll excuse me the mess I currently am…” _  
>  _“I’ll have to agree with you,” Christian replied, “you look like crap. It’s even worse than I thought, you really look worse than when you had bronchitis.” _  
>  _“Remember when you coughed up blood all over Bouquinerie? Now that was fun. She remained mad at you for an entire week!” said Henri. ________
> 
>  


End file.
